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Belated Seven Year Indieversary

I completely forgot about my little indieversary! (Does it count if you didn’t do anything of note in the last year?) I was so confused, I thought I’d already gone through this year’s post, but as it turns out, that was last year, and my memory sucks. I can’t even blame pregnant brain anymore because I haven’t had a kid since way back in the day. Ageing will just have to take the hit from now on instead. 🙂

So, yeah, a year in review. On the surface, I’d rate the last twelve months (well, thirteen now because I’m perennially late for stuff) as embarrassingly poor. No novel to be seen. That makes me itch. (That could also be the crappy ironlicious hard water in my house though). I’m pretty sure that this time last year I told himself indoors that I had no words left. (Er, again). *Iz still dramatic*

Here’s the thing. When I looked through my notes and files and the work I actually did, I realised I wrote a lot. I wrote novels and created worlds and planned new series. A bunch of them. I just didn’t, you know, do much of anything else with them. Our lifestyle has changed, as I keep harping on about, and apparently I got too used to undistracted time for a while there because even though I started when I had four kids under six (my womb just gasped in horror), a baby on the way, and zero quiet time, now I can’t lose myself in a story if I get interrupted even moderately frequently. It’s been scarily easy to stay in the real world (for the first time in my life because I am a known spacer).

The other day, I told myself I was going to book in editing slots for the Harbinger trilogy, but I chickened out because I convinced myself I wouldn’t be ready. And that’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not helped by the fact I partook in too many writing courses due to an obsession with improvement that’s worse now because I overanalyse everything to a disgustingly over the top degree and can’t enjoy reading… anything. (This river I’m crying, it’s all for you.) Other people chase sales and fame and a rock and roll lifestyle, but I’m like “My kingdom for the perfect sentence.” I never said I wasn’t boring, okay?

I released some novellas as a means to give back to the newsletter subscribers, but honestly, each and every one of those gave me So. Much. Stress. because they weren’t Perfect. And I felt guilty firstly because I didn’t publish those for about an eon because I endlessly tweaked every freaking sentence (you know, just to make sure I sucked the fun out of every scene), and then even more so for actually releasing non-Perfect stories, which, let me tell you, is not the path to sanity. (The epic level of run-on sentences in this blog should be a clue).

So there are things I need to work on this year. Stop waiting for ideal working conditions, stop aiming for the Perfect story that will never exist in anyone’s reality, and stop being a big cowardly baby. Not being insane would probably work, too. 😀

Seven years on, and I’m still learning. (And I’m sorry if this blog is particularly rambling and nonsensical, I’m just super tired this year week). Onward!